The American Fox Tales Book Series
There is a common desire within us to know where we came from. I was lucky enough to have loving parents and a father I idolized. Parables about previous generations of Fox men provided important lessons about life.
I’ve lived a pretty colorful life that began with a pleasant but also protracted painful childhood. I came out of that crippling beginning swinging when many would not have. I want to know why.
These books study the effect fathers have on sons. To isolate lessons and trauma that passed from one generation to manifest in the next. Is it possible to understand how their lives have affected mine?
Benjamin Fox has appeared in several historical biographies and genealogical books. All indicate he was the son of William and Mary Fox of Virginia. But my DNA says those books are wrong.
The many mysteries that swirl about in The Secrets of Benjamin are laid against the backdrop of the birth of a nation.
The bibliography of The Secrets of Benjamin Fox is unequaled. Both classical sources and the most recent DNA developments are combined to give a rich history of this antebellum family, the life of Benjamin Fox and the little-known Fox family that he sired.
The Secrets of Benjamin Fox
Ephraim Fox on the Oregon Trail, 1852
Ephraim Fox is the grandson of Benjamin Fox. One might say Ephraim is the father of the Oregon branch of the Virginia Fox family tree.
His motivation to leave life as he knew it behind was probably directly related to the secrets his grandfather. In any case, it is clear Ephraim was seeking a completely different life; a better world to raise his family.
After over a decade of digging into the past, Ephraim’s third great grandson, James Royal Fox, Jr., relates his grandfather’s untold story of crossing the plains, from Missouri to Linn County, Oregon, in this second book about the Oregon Fox family that came from the Virginia Fox’s.
One of the most interesting differences in “Ephraim Fox on the Oregon Trail, 1852” than other accounts coming west, is the sense of the journey being a death race.
Somehow Ephraim Fox finds himself at the front of the largest emigration across the Oregon Trail. As he shepherd’s his family west, cholera begins killing those behind and despite exhaustion the family find themselves in a 3mph race in unforgiving country, scratching forward fast as they can to avoid getting terminally sick.
Breathtaking detail captures the trail as Ephraim leads his family to Oregon.
Disassociated and forgotten clues have been found which accurately locate the people and describe the trail just as it was when Ephraim Fox crossed it.
This is a story Ephraim would have wanted told.
Even so, had he known the price he would have to pay to reach Oregon, I wonder if Ephraim might have remained in Macon County, Missouri.
Ephraim Fox, An Oregon Pioneer Story
The American Fox Tales book series began as a trilogy, and “Ephraim Fox an Oregon Pioneer Story” is the third and final book.
Ephraim Fox was 30 years old when he arrived in Oregon in 1852, and he lived until 1899.
Hostilities were increasing between settlers and Natives and almost immediately the Fox family was drawn in.
From serving with Captain Jonathon Keeney in Southern Oregon in the Rogue River War, to homesteading near Harrisburg, then Crawfordsville, Oregon, this is the untold story of Ephraim Fox’s life.
Ephraim reached the territory before telegraph or train; and ten years before the Civil War.
While he could minimize the effect of the war on his sons, he could not hold back barb wire, the telegraph, railroads and industrialization.
Ephraim lived long enough to grapple with the societal changes that affected his entire family at the turn of the century.
Toward the end of his life two of Ephraim’s sons became involved with the state’s first case of patricide. Newspaper headlines threatened to erase any good reputation Ephraim Fox had ever earned.
In these pages are the life and times of Ephraim Fox that time forgot, but his 3rd great grandson recovered.
The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been before.
Albert Einstein
Ephraim Fox, An Oregon Pioneer Story
Available March 14, 2023 at Booklocker.com, Amazon, Barnes & Noble.com, and many, many other of your favorite online bookstores!
To reach the west, tens of thousands of pioneers crossed the Great American Desert, mountain range after mountain range, untamed roaring rivers, encountering numerous bands of Native tribes, some hostile some not, not to mention sickness and injury. They heard Oregon was like Eden. They said a man could make something new of himself; opportunity abounded.
As Ephraim Fox worked his way through the vast, last great frontier on the continent in the summer of 1852, he certainly couldn’t have guessed at how many life changing tribulations yet lied in his future in the Linn county plains of the Willamette Valley in the Oregon country ahead.
As a pioneer of 1852 and the head of his family, it was up to Ephraim Fox to establish the family in the frontier of the Willamette Valley in Linn County.
Third written in the series, Ephraim Fox, An Oregon Pioneer Story details the lives of the Fox family in the Oregon Territory and follows their lives as Oregon becomes a state. The more recent time frame in which this book takes place allows a much deeper investigation into the lives of those involved.
Ephraim served with one brother and two brothers-in-law in the Rogue River Indian War, with the Oregon Mounted Volunteers under Capt. Jonathon Keeney’s Company C, 2nd Regiment at the height of the conflict. When his wife died some years later, Ephraim remarried and grew an additional crop of children.
This book is an amazing roller coaster ride of victory, defeat and emotional redemption in the lives of people who were never famous, but contributed both to the establishment of the state of Oregon and the name Fox in the Oregon Country.
As Ephraim nears the end of his life, the events that transpire in this book will shock you. They certainly did me.